Automated dialing systems presently used in the prior art automatically dial telephone numbers contained within call records. Upon reaching an outside party, the automated dialing system places the outside party on hold with a recorded message, while waiting for an available agent to service the call. Often, the outside party hangs up on the recorded message or the message plays to completion, thereby cancelling the outbound dial. Once the call is cancelled, the call record is disposed of by returning the call record to the group of call records requiring a dial.
A limitation of the prior art is the lack of indicia that the cancelled call was connected to an outside party. A further limitation is that the call record, once returned to the group of call records awaiting dialing, will reach the same outside party and again place the outside party on hold.
The limitations of the prior art are increased when the automated dialing system utilizes an automatic pacing method setting the ratio of agents servicing a call to the number of outbound dials generated by the automated dialing system. When the ratio is set too high, a large number of calls are put on hold and thus, results in an increased number of cancelled calls. Each cancelled call signals the automated dialing system to initiate a new dial, thereby maintaining the increased number of cancelled calls and resulting in system dialing inefficiencies.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method for redialing a cancelled or aborted call placed to an outside party shortly after the initial connection has been made to that outside party when an agent is available to handle the call. Further, a low priority rating should attach to the redial call such that the regular outbound dialing of the automated dialing system is not affected. Further, the cancelled call should be given a pending status such that the automatic pacing ratio of the system would be dynamically adjusted to reflect the pending redial, thereby resulting in a substantially reduced number of cancelled calls.